Kate Prague is half so beautiful. Who can this lady be?"

A carriage now rattled up to the door, and the ladies came bundling into
the apartment. He suddenly recollected he was there unannounced, but
what could he do?

"Bless me! Mercy! Why, Mr. Sheldon here, and nobody to receive him! What
must he think?" exclaimed Mrs. Prague, in a tone of astonishment.

"I'm most concerned, my good madam," said he, advancing, for what you
must think to find me so unceremoniously ensconced in your
drawing-room."

"Don't say a word about that," was the answer. "Was not this once your
home? I hope you will still regard it in that light. Kate, come forward;
here is Mr. Sheldon. I declare, what a delightful surprise!" The old
doctor now entered, and burst into a torrent of welcome on beholding
Sheldon.

"How did you get here, my boy," he asked, "to steal upon us so slyly,
when I received a letter only yesterday saying you would not reach us
before next week?"

Sheldon explained briefly. When he mentioned that a young lady had
escorted him to the parlor, and invited him to await the family's
return, a visible frown lowered over Mrs. Prague's before smiling
countenance, and she and Catherine soon excused themselves to prepare
for dinner.

CHAPTER IX.

"But, ah! if thou hadst loved me--had I been
All to thy dreams that to mine own thou art."

On a dim, gray morning in early winter, Lawrence Hardin sat by the couch
of his wife, her thin, wasted hand lying unconsciously in his, and her
quick, heavy breathings moving the dark locks of his hair, as he bent
low over her sleeping form. Three months had passed since that fainting
scene, and the young wife had encountered a long, severe stroke of
illness. The husband watched incessantly by her bed-side, for he would
not suffer her wild, fevered ravings to be heard by other ears than his
own.

It was all revealed to him. He knew he had married a woman whose heart
was another's, and that she had been compelled to the step by the
threats and vehemence of her mother.

O, how the strong man writhed in his agony! To know Marion did not love
him, was enough to endure; but to know she loved another, ah! that was
madness. His passions were roused to fury, yet not on _her_ should they
wreak their vengeance. No; on the man that had stolen her love from him,
or rather the man on whom she had bestowed her love, Frank Sheldon. On
his de